[Illustration: [Pelargonium]]
A pelargonium is a “stork’s bill.” “Pelargonium” comes from a Greek word
meaning “stork,” and the plant is so named because of the long, beaklike
seed-pods. We call the pelargoniums “geraniums,” and raise them in our
houses. “Geranium” means almost the same as “pelargonium,” for a
geranium is a “crane’s bill,” “geranium” coming from a Greek word
meaning “crane,” and the plant is so called because of the shape of the
seed-pods.
I do not think there is much difference between a crane’s bill and a
stork’s bill, and these two plants with their seed-pods so very much
alike were, no doubt, named “stork’s bill” and “crane’s bill” to
distinguish them from each other. But we have succeeded in hopelessly
mixing them up, for everybody insists upon calling the pelargonium
“geranium,” and the geraniums which grow wild in our woods and fields we
call “crane’s bill” and “herb Robert.”
The pelargoniums are mostly Africans. There are a great many kinds of
them, and all but ten or twelve live in South Africa among the Bushmen,
the Boers, and the Englishmen.
The rest have chosen to settle in the northern part of Africa, in the
Orient, if you know where that is, and in Australia. Some people believe
there are four hundred different pelargoniums, and some say there are
less than two hundred. You see, the pelargoniums change easily. Thus a
great many varieties are always arising, and it is almost impossible at
this late day to discover which was the original form of the plant.
The pelargoniums we know best are the ones we call “horseshoe
geraniums,” “Lady Washington geraniums,” and “rose geraniums.”
We are apt to think of the whole Pelargonium Family as being ornamental
rather than useful, but in that wonderful South African country where so
many of them live, there is actually a pelargonium that produces edible
tubers!
The next time you go to Cape Colony you must be sure and eat potatoes
gathered from a geranium plant!
Down in Algeria, where the walls are so white and the sun shines so hot,
the people express an oil from their geraniums and sell it. Other
geraniums also yield this fragrant oil, but nowhere is it so largely
used as in sunny Algeria.
Pelargoniums love to grow. You need only break off a twig and stick it
in the ground, and it will grow as merrily as though nothing had
happened.
One day a double-flowered crimson pelargonium blew away in a gale of
wind. It broke off just above the root and away it went. It was rescued,
stuck back into the pot of earth, abundantly watered, and continued to
open its flowers as though such an escapade were an everyday occurrence!
Now about its beak. The pelargonium has a beak, no doubt, but it does
not put it to the same use the stork does, for its beak is made up of
the long styles of the pistil which cling fast to a central column. The
whole fruit looks a _little_ like a long bird’s beak. This beak _opens_,
but not to swallow little fishes as a stork’s beak does.
[Illustration: [Pelargonium]]
[Illustration: [Pelargonium]]
It opens to let out a feather! When the seed gets ripe, the case in
which it lies at the bottom of the pistil breaks away, and the style
curves up and breaks loose from the central support. As soon as the
style loosens, out comes the feather. Not a real feather, of course, but
a tuft of silvery white hairs that grow along the inside of the style
and are packed close as can be until the style lets them out; then they
separate and form a wide fringe along the loosened style. Finally, the
style is only held by the very tip; then this gives way, and the feather
flies away with seed and style. It flies on the wings of the wind, of
course, since it has none of its own.
In this way the geranium seeds are sometimes carried long distances. But
this is not the end of the story. At last the seed with its coverings
and feather rests on the ground. The seed end is towards the ground, and
the very tip of the pod is provided with a few short, stiff hairs, that
point backwards like the barbs on a fish hook or a bee sting.
[Illustration: [Pelargonium]]
Now what do you suppose these hairs are for? Do you think their being
there is a mere accident? Not at all. When the weather is damp, the
style, with the feather attached, curls up. Then it acts like a gimlet
and forces the pointed end of the seed into the ground. When it becomes
dry, the style straightens out. But the seed cannot be pulled out of the
ground when this happens, because the barbs on the tip of the seed-case
hold it fast! So it does time and again. When it is damp, the seed is
forced deeper into the earth. When it is dry, the style straightens out
so as to be ready to curl up again.
You see how it is, do you not? The pelargonium is _planting its seed_.
[Illustration: [Pelargonium]]
Certainly the geraniums are good parents. All the members of this
astonishing family do something clever for the sake of the seeds.